


Logically

by mysoulrunswithwolves



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: College AU, F/M, Lacrosse!Draco, So much fluff it will rot your teeth, but i feel really accomplished, just a cute one shot, this was really fun to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5557214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysoulrunswithwolves/pseuds/mysoulrunswithwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione surveys the room, a faint expression of disdain coloring her features. “I mean,” she starts “logically we should be dating.”</p><p>Draco spews a gulp of whatever alcohol they’re serving here all over Harry as he walks past. “Excuse me?”</p><p> </p><p>Hermione should not do Jello shots; a story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Logically

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elossa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elossa/gifts).



Hermione surveys the room, a faint expression of disdain coloring her features. “I mean,” she starts “logically we should be dating.”

Draco spews a gulp of whatever alcohol they’re serving here all over Harry as he walks past. “Excuse me?”

 

**6 Weeks Earlier**

 

“Why is it always so _cold_ in here?” Hermione, shivering, surveyed the room, half expecting to see icicles sprouting from the ceiling. First day back from winter holiday and the heating was already malfunctioning. Great. “It’s a lecture hall, not an igloo.”

Harry hmm’d disinterestedly and kept staring in the direction of the Weasley family. Why all four of them _had_ to take the same class together was a mystery to Hermione, but for reasons that had everything to do with the youngest Weasley, Harry couldn’t stop staring in their direction. Hermione did her best to avoid looking at any of them. The events of the summer still a little too recent. She slid Harry’s discarded jacket off the back of his chair and slipped it around her shoulders, just as the professor walked in and started class.

Not five minutes into the lecture, the doors in the back of the room snapped open. Silence fell in the lecture hall as two students meandered slowly down the aisle. Hermione turned to follow their progress, along with everyone else in the room. Her eyes immediately fell upon the tall, blonde, and completely imposing form of Draco Malfoy, trust fund kid and lacrosse star. _Just kill me now, please._

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was going to be a long semester.

 

“I cannot believe this.” Hermione sighed and pulled her navy pea coat tighter around her.

“What, the competition our professor announced?”

“No, I was expecting that. I mean really Harry, it’s a marketing class. What I wasn’t expecting was to be paired with the university’s biggest ass in designer clothes.”

“Well it’s not entirely awful. You’ve got the twins in your group too. Besides, Draco isn’t _that_ bad. I’m on the lacrosse team with him and he could be worse.”

“Excuse me? He could be _worse??_ And were you even there this summer? It’s going to be fucking _awful._ ”

“But Ron’s in my group. Honestly woman, what are you worried about? The twins don’t even care that you’re not dating. I don’t know if they even noticed you guys were this summer to be honest.”

Hermione could have screamed in frustration. The fact that they were in the middle of campus during a class change was the only thing that stopped her from doing just that. “Never mind Harry. I expect that since you have Ginny in your group you couldn’t be happier.”

The blush that colored his face almost made up for the awful semester ahead of her. _Almost_. “That reminds me, are you going to the party tonight?”

Hermione chose to ignore his sudden change of topic. “The Weasley one? I wasn’t planning on it.”

“I need you to come with me.”

“What? Why? Go yourself.”

“Because you’re my best friend and I need you.”

“Bullshit. You’re just scared to go alone.”

“Okay maybe, but you owe me for the whole pudding incident this summer.”

Hermione abruptly stopped walking. “This is where my next class is.” She said, and rushed into the nearest building.

“But you don’t have any more classes today!” Harry called after her. _Women_.

 

 

**Harry I swear if I’m at this party for one more minute I’m going to die.**

_You’re fine. You’re not going to die._

**I will, just watch me.**

Harry reads her text and looks at her from across the room, shooting her a look like _give me a break_. He’s been talking to Ginny all night and it’s not like she can’t talk to Ginny, because they are friends, but that would “not be helpful” or some other shit according to Harry. So here she is, at a party when she’d rather be at home starting on one of the dozens of assignments she has due this week. He didn’t even need her there, the little shit. What a liar. She slinks down in the couch as she sees yet _another_ head of red hair pass through her peripheral vision, honestly how many of them _are_ there???

A tray of brightly colored shots slinks in front of her nose. “Jello shots?” Fred coaxes as he slides onto the couch next to her. “You look like you could use a boost.”

Hermione looks at the nearly neon colored shots and scowls at them like they’ve personally offended her in some way. “I don’t need that kind of a boost.”

“But we miss the carefree Hermione from this summer!” George says, landing with an ungraceful whump on her other side.

Of course, Ron chose that moment to walk past the couch where she currently sat, stopping dead in his tracks at George’s words. “When have either of you seen Hermione be anything other than horribly stuffy?! Honestly, it’s like she never takes a break from being a know-it-all workaholic with her nose stuck in textbook.”

It was nothing she hadn’t heard before, but the words feel like a slap in the face, and carried the weight of grievances long past overdue.  “Well she may be now, but that’s after the number you did on her.” This from Fred, the jello shots somehow, miraculously, all the right side up and still on the tray despite his emphatic gestures.

Ron goes an entertaining shade of red at his brother’s words and opens his mouth in preparation for a mostly idiotic comeback that Hermione definitely does not want to hear. She picks up a bright red shot and slurps in down in one smooth motion. “Right boys, let’s see if you can keep up.”

 

She’s four shots in with one of the twins doing a body shot off her when she hears him. “Well this is not what I expected to see this weekend.” Drawls a voice from the archway into the main room directly across from Hermione. Of course, it _had_ to be Draco Malfoy. She giggles as—who is it George?—flicks his tongue along the waist of her shorts. _Damn_ that tickled. The rational part of her brain screams that this _is not_ how she wants to have her first real encounter with _the Draco Malfoy_ to go, and four shots ago she probably would have listened to her rational side. But then again, she was tired of being _horribly stuffy_. An alcohol emboldened move had her arching up to a sitting positon, planting a shockingly delicate kiss on George’s cheek, and slinging an arm around Fred’s neck before raising one eyebrow at Malfoy in a silent challenge. “And what is it, _exactly_ , that you were expecting to see?”

 

It’s two weeks later and Hermione still can’t look Draco in the eye. Which is ridiculous, because she has to talk to him almost every day, multiple times for this team competition. And it’s a little unfair that like, she’s on a team with him, and the twins. Because they’re absolute rubbish at anything resembling _actual_ work, which leaves her and Draco doing work alone together.

A lot.

In all fairness, she had tried to convince him to let her do the project alone. His response to this idea was “If you think I’m going to let us fail because the twins don’t know what it means to work, you’re wrong.”

“I know, which is why I was offering to do all of it on my own. I’ll get us a good grade.”

“Like I’d trust you to do that. No, I think I’m needed here.”

“I don’t think you’re needed anywhere near me, honestly.”

“Still touchy over that incident this weekend? Good heavens Granger. Get a grip. It was just—”

She’d cut him off by abruptly grabbing her things and walking away. She didn’t have time for this nonsense. There was homework to be done and honestly could she just get over it now it wasn’t a big deal. Except it was. Because he was _Draco Malfoy_ and he wasn’t going to ever let her forget it. Which is why, two weeks later, Hermione was suffering through yet another long study session in the presence of Draco Malfoy and cursing the twins to the ends of the earth for their fucking _fantastic_ idea of getting her drunk enough to...

 **SAVE ME.** Hermione couldn’t take it anymore. She texted Harry for help.

His _immediate_ response was like _Is this about that thing that happened at the party? Hermione get_ over _it. It wasn’t a big deal. I’m not going to save you from something you can’t handle yourself._

Draco coughed, making Hermione look up sharply from her phone directly into his liquid silver eyes. “Texting your boyfriend for a rescue? How quaint.” He smirked, eyes flashing in the light of the study room.

“I haven’t got a boyfriend, and I don’t need to be rescued.” She snapped back. “I just can’t believe Fred and George have left me alone with you, again.”

Something that looked a lot like triumph flickered briefly across his face before he glanced away. “Look, Granger, I know I’m not your favorite person, but I’m the only one who can help you win this competition and stick it too that horrendous oaf you dated over the summer. What’s his name…Ron?”

She gaped, probably unattractively, at him. “How did you—”

“Harry likes to talk during practice.”

 **Remind me to kill you later _._** She texts to Harry.

“So,” he continues “if you’re done, let’s get to winning this thing, shall we?”

 

The resulting weeks flew by in a flurry of midterms, assignments, and long hours spent with Draco. As the days went on, Hermione found the companionable silence they had fallen into during these sessions more and more comfortable. They talked at first, only minimally and mostly about the project. Then one day during a long study session, she catches Draco staring at her, and when she raises an eyebrow he asks “What’s your favorite color?”

“Silver.” Hermione blurts before she could stop herself. She blushes, horror creeping over her as she realized that she’d answered with the first thing that had flown through her brain, which was the color of his eyes.

He smirks at her, before saying “Mine’s green, by the way.” Oh, he was still an ass, but in a much more endearing way that he was before. “You look pretty today.”

Hermione scowls. “Stop that.”

Draco just smiles in response, and Hermione feels that smile snatch her breath away from her. To her complete surprise, she feels the corners of her mouth tugging upwards in a reactionary smile to his. She doesn’t fight it.

 

A week later, in the same study room, he kisses her. It happens suddenly and without warning as she’s drawing a chart to mark the progress of some trend or other on the white board. She feels him standing very close behind her, the heat bleeding into the back of her cotton t-shirt. Her hand stutters against the board, her straight line turning jagged as he brushes aside a loose tendril of hair away from her neck and twisting it back into the loose braid down her back. She turns, ever so slowly, until her brown eyes meet his.

“What are you doing?” She asks in a low, hesitant whisper.

“Conducting research. I have a very puzzling problem.” He inches closer, closing the small gap between them.

“And what have you learned?” She asks, voice barely audible as she tilts her head up to keep her gaze matched with his. Her breath catches as she feels his hands slide slowly across her hips.

“That some puzzles aren’t meant to be solved.”

Her response is lost as he lowers his lips to hers and steals away whatever words she would have said. Her hands tangle into the silky soft strands of his white blonde hair as he surrounds her, filling her senses with everything Draco.

When they finally got back to the project, Hermione had to redraw most of what had once been on the white board.

***

**I swear, if you aren’t here in ten minutes, I’m going to tell your mother what really happened to her favorite kettle.**

_DON’T YOU DARE WE WILL BE THERE IN FIVE._

In actuality, it took Fred and George fifteen minutes to get to class, by which time Hermione was fully panicked and Draco was, to his credit, remaining mostly calm while trying to handle Hermione’s bouts of hysteria.

“ _Will you stop fidgeting.”_ He hissed at her from his seat next to her in the lecture hall. They were two minutes away from presenting their business model for the competition, without either Weasley in sight. “It’s not like we actually need them here.”

“I know,” she whispered back “but if they aren’t here we’ll be disqualified.”

“Damnit. I forgot about that.” Panic crept into his voice. “I did _not_ work this hard for them to ruin it.”

“You should both see how you look from up here. It’s a riot.”

Hermione and Draco both whirled around in their seats to find the twins lounging in the seats on the row directly behind and above them. “How long have you been there??” Hermione gasped.

“What would you say, Fred, ten minutes?”

“Eh, more like seven.”

Draco paled in anger. “You are the most aggravating people I know.”

“Ah, but you adore us all the same.” Said Fred.

“While I simultaneously hate and adore you both, I’m sure that Draco has never _adored_ anything in his life, except maybe his lacrosse stick.” Hermione smiled sweetly at Draco while George snickered into his hand.

Draco just rolls his eyes like, let’s just get this _over_ with already.

 

They win, of course. Draco takes her to dinner for what he calls “the civilized celebration for those of us who actually did the work” but they both know it’s just an excuse.

“You were wrong earlier.” He says over dinner.

“About what?”

“Me not adoring anything.”

“I knew you were a little too attached to your lacrosse stick.”

“I adore you.”

Hermione has no response to this, except to smile broadly back at him. It’s been a while since she’d smiled that big to anyone. It felt good.

 

That weekend, in celebration, Fred and George throw an absolute rager at the fraternity where they live. Hermione would normally disapprove, but considering that their prize was not having to take the end of term final, she felt like a bit of a celebration was appropriate.

Draco sidles up to where she’s standing in a corner, watching Harry and Ginny be just too cute together. It’s honestly just a little bit disgusting. “Enjoying the party?” He asks.

She shrugs. “It’s alright. Just another party.”

“Maybe you should do some shots. Loosen up a bit.”

“Right like that was such a good idea the first time.”

“Well it was definitely one hell of an introduction.”

“I don’t think that letting you do body shots off of me is what normal people would call an _introduction_.”

His only response is to smirk at her and tug on her braid in, what she guessed was, a playful manner.

Hermione surveys the room, a faint expression of disdain coloring her features. “I mean,” she starts “logically we should be dating.”

Draco spews a gulp of whatever alcohol they’re serving here all over Harry as he walks past, who took one look at Hermione and decided to address that incident at a later date. “Excuse me?”

“We have spent a ridiculous amount of time together these last six weeks.”

“What’s that got to do with whether or not we’re dating?”

“I suppose it doesn’t have anything to do with that really, and everything to do with the fact that I quite like you.”

Draco smiles, stepping closer to her and slipping a hand around her waist. “I just sort of assumed that we already were dating.”

"Oh.” She says.

And that’s all she has time to say before Draco makes her forget all about anything else but him.

           

 


End file.
